Tim Cook

About me

I started rowing at the age of 40 on the Thames in Windsor, UK. I fell in love with the sport as well as the river several times. A short while later, I created the junior rowing program at our rowing club. The first two kids to join were my eldest sons; they both went on to win the Boat Race for Oxford. Ollie became an Olympian, and Jamie rowed for GB. My 3rd son, Robbie, rowed for Leander, and my daughter Beatrix rowed for her school. I grew the program from 2 to 60 children, aged 8–18. We competed in lots of local regattas and rowed across the English Channel. In 2011, I led our first rowing expedition in Zambia, covering 1000km of the upper Zambezi from Angola to Victoria Falls. Since then, we have successfully completed three further expeditions, including a non-stop crossing of Lake Kariba and the first-ever rowing expedition through the Kafue National Park. On each expedition, we have run learn-to-row courses and ensured that we have highly diverse, multinational teams. My family has been on every expedition too. So far, we have raised $100,000 for clean water charities. Outside of rowing, I work in recruitment. Earlier in my career, I was in the UK military, including active service in Northern Ireland, and I served with the reserve special forces. I have an English Literature degree from Newcastle University, an MSc from UCL, and an MBA from London Business School.

Motivations

Completing the journey we began in 2011

Worries

Although we have rowed more than 2500KM through Zambia and have done several expeditions there, we have not led one in Mozambique before. Everything is different: the river, the lake, the language, the culture, the context, the risk. We can plan for as much of this as possible, but ultimately, we need to develop a collective mindset that is resilient, creative, and solution-oriented. Can we do it?